Still waiting for Verizon's explanation for this.

Tools like that should help. If we can't outspend these companies on buying politicians, then maybe we can have a ton of watchdogs out there educating the public at the first signs of douchebaggery.

Watchdogs aren't much use when there's a monopoly.

They don't need to explain it anymore. They are just prioritizing traffic.

Here’s a graphic from the WSJ showing how beginning in the early 1990s, dozens of cable companies merged and re-merged and narrowed down to four today: Time Warner Cable, Comcast, Charter and Cox. If this deal happens, four become three.

I don't think they included that snippet in their denial.

The combined company will almost certainly be operating under open internet principles if this deal is approved FWIW.

Sure..
The FCC and Open Internet, For more information about the open Internet, see www.openinternet.gov.

We're sorry
The page you're looking for is unavailable to view.

Comcast and Time Warner currently have the highest ISP market share for residential, which I am pretty sure is more than 1/3 of the market together. So obviously their merger will bear greatly on consequences of monopoly under non net neutrality. This merger should not be allowed to happen.

There is such a thing as the character of a company, even huge sprawling behemoth monstrosities like comcast have leadership that set a tone which might be different than other outfits in the same industry. And when it comes to corporate character Comcast is just the worst. From their anti-competitive practices to the way they treat their customers, they are just scum. I think that Comcast would have no qualms about being very active with throttling, not only to make money but also to sensor anything they perceive as a threat to their profits including political speech. This is just my intuition based on their past behavior.

They can't. They are bound by the open internet rules that were just repealed as a result of their NBC/Universal transaction. Im pretty confident the DOJ and FCC will be extending the time period they are bound by open internet if they approve this transaction.

Last summer, TWC and CBS couldn't reach an agreement on the latter's "retransmission consent" fee. These kinds of disagreements happen all the time.
It ended with CBS blacked out for millions of Time Warner Cable customers. For an entire month. The only thing that repaired the relationship was the onset of the NFL season.

A stalemate that long, though, proved to cable providers that they no longer have the leverage they once thought. And the quickest way to gain leverage is size.

Correct, this gives them more leverage on retrans consent negotiations and that's a large factor behind the merger. Broadcast channels got pretty much zero in carriage fees until six or seven years ago and fees are increasing quickly, along with fees for sports programming.

What does that have to do with the post of mine you quoted?

I refuse to answer that question on the grounds that it may incriminate me.

My point was that they don't have to provide an answer anymore. There is nothing they need to deny. Previously net neutrality was the reason you could go to a provider and ask why your traffic to A was much faster than your traffic to B. Now they can just ignore you or give a meaningless answer. The only option you have if you don't like the speeds you are seeing is to switch to a different provider.

This is also not just about making your own content provider faster than its competitors. They can also slow down or even block torrent downloads or something like the bitcoin network. I believe it was Verizon that tried to limit the amount of torrents by intentionally dropping packets and they were forced to stop that based on net neutrality.

I'm a mergers & acquisitions noob so maybe lolme but how did AT&T Broadband merge with both Charter AND Comcast? Adelphia also with both Comcast and Time Warner.

I believe they were regional subdivisions.

Also, no kings were kings like the Adelphia family kings were kings

Is there no possibility that their previous judgement is now voided by the latest ruling?

Why are you so confident that the FCC will be extending the time period of NN when the court just ruled they couldn't mandate NN?

Its not voided its a condition of a consent decree with the DOJ.

Even if the merger is approved without conditions open internet rules apply through 2018. Given the FCCs still wants open internet rules and the court judgment has zero to do with consent decrees, seems like a logical merger condition to me.

FCC plans to re-write net neutrality rules

Of course, Republicans want to stop them

http://www.nationaljournal.com/tech/...rules-20140219

NEXT UP: TV ADS JUST FOR YOU, DEAR VOTER

Welcome to Addressable TV, an emerging technology that allows advertisers — Senate hopefuls and insurance companies alike — to pay some broadcasters to pinpoint specific homes.

"This is the power of a 30-second television commercial with the precision of a piece of direct mail targeted to the individual household level," said Paul Guyardo, chief revenue officer at DirecTV. "Never before have advertisers had that level of precision when it came to a 30-second commercial."

voting histories to demographics, magazine subscriptions to credit scores, all in the hopes of identifying their target audience.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/next-...you-dear-voter

http://money.cnn.com/2014/02/21/tech...html?hpt=hp_t3

Apparently some of the issue is verizon refusing to upgrade network infrastructure to make netflix work better for their customers. Intentional, yes, but not the type of intentional people were thinking.

This made me wonder, could one make an app that rerouted network traffic over whatever slow noes there were between these customers and the netflix servers, like a basic sort of proxy for netflix only? Charge a monthly fee to cover bandwidth costs, that sort of thing.

Yeah it's not throttling and it's not clear to me that Verizon is entirely at fault, but I doubt it would happen in a truly competitive market. I wonder if there is a less expansive regulatory fix possible

There used to be a law called the Fairness Doctrine that guaranteed the right of reply, without the presenter yelling at you to shut up every 15 seconds. It was allowed to expire late in the Reagan years, and urgently needs to be renewed.
What better tool is there for "opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible" than making sure they are allowed to be seen and heard in the first place?

And how about some enforcement of the laws guaranteeing that the public, not corporations, owns the airwaves.
Even the big corporate media barons should again be required to renew their FCC license to broadcast every five years, complete with public hearings.

Also do not think anyone should be allowed to graduate from high school until they pass a class on media literacy.



https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speec...thought-police